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April 29, 1971 Buck, Had a very interesting Saturday night. Kelly and I went on an adventure down the road, that didn’t turn out quite like we’d planned. Ran into numerous difficulties, mostly of our own making. Can’t share the details now but will fill you in next time we get together.
Hoops Besides longer letters, Buck and I would share short notes at times. Often it would be to preserve a thought that we could discuss in detail later. Such was the case with this ditty during my senior year of high school. The lessons learned in that escapade stay with me ‘til this day.
My folks were law abiding people. They did their best to instill their values in me and my siblings, and for the most part, they succeeded. Oh, there were times when I tap danced up to the line but there was only once when I intentionally set out to break the law.
Kelly lived a mile down the road to the south of where I grew up. We were classmates and had more than a few adventures together. I have to admit there were times when I was a bit jealous of him. His family was one of the first in the neighborhood to get an oil furnace. That meant Kelly didn’t have to haul wood and feed the firebox in the middle of the night like most of the rest of us did. They got the first color TV in the neighborhood, which necessitated that I visit more often than usual. When we were eight, he had his tonsils removed. My dad insisted I go see him with a get well card. He got to eat ice cream while I was there, and I didn’t. They had a small farm, and he introduced me to what happened when you touched an electric fence. Kid experiences – that’s what we had.
His moral compass had been guided in much the same direction as mine. Both our parents grew up during The Depression and post-war America seemed to have more of a black and white bend on what was right and what was wrong. We would occasionally get into “mischief” but never got into trouble. That year we tried to end our innocence.
It was the spring of the year. The snow was gone but a healthy covering over the winter ensured that all the creeks in the neighborhood ran high and fast for a couple of weeks after its disappearance. One such flowage exited the south end of Snaptail Lake. It made its way through Jack Makinen’s pasture, behind Willy Reinen’s property and just touched the edge of Al Garner’s yard before it crossed under the Scenic Highway about a quarter mile down the road from Kelly’s place. It wound its way through the Cedar Swamp before entering the Prairie River just north of Lawrence Lake. My dad had told me many times that when he was a kid, there would be a constant line of walleyes and northern pike swimming the entire length to Snaptail. Over the years the creek became clogged with alder brush and debitage and the fish no longer migrated through that flowage. The instincts of the fish didn’t disappear, however. Every spring they would start their journey but were foiled by the time they reached the culvert under the road bed. They would linger there in a bit of a pool before heading back to the river.
Kelly had been down to look at it one evening and we talked about it on the way to school the next day.
“There were some real hogs in there!” he mused. “Some of those northerns had to go better than 20 pounds!”
We both told of tales our families had related about how they survived in the 30s. Jobs were scarce and money even scarcer. Venison year ‘round and fish taken out of season when the opportunity presented itself kept many from going hungry.
“Didn’t seem to hurt the northern population too much to take one or two in the spring” was the consensus. Seemed like an adventure worth exploring! We made plans all week to meet up for a safari the following weekend.
There really wasn’t much to plan. We only needed a couple of things to make it work. We both speared fish through the ice in the winter and had many times walked the creeks in the spring to impale suckers to smoke and make into “mock salmon.” Spears were readily available. Kelly had a flashlight with a long handle that held five “C” batteries, and I had a spotlight powered by a 6-volt battery. Both emitted powerful beams of light. That was about it. I would drive down to his place about midnight on Saturday and we would walk the remaining quarter of a mile to the pool in the creek. Midnight was late enough – right?
Mom had a habit when she had trouble sleeping of sitting at the kitchen table and playing solitaire. I came down the stairs from my bedroom fully dressed for the outdoors and was a bit surprised to see her there. She gave me a look from the corner of her eyes and said, “I know what you’re up to. If you get caught, don’t expect us to come bail you out!”
My folks gave me a lot of latitude.
By the time I was a senior in high school, they let me make my own decisions. She wouldn’t tell me what to do but made it clear how she felt about what I was planning to do. The first tinge of doubt was subtly creeping into my mind, taking a chunk out of my sense of adventure.
I threw the spear and light into the back seat and made my way down to Kelly’s house. He was waiting at the edge of the yard. He had gotten almost the exact message from his mom as he was going out the door. Moms have a sixth sense. Moms are like that.
Well, we took off hiking down the Scenic Highway. It seemed like the perfect night. There were low-hanging clouds, and a bit of fog was in the air. We only had a quarter mile to go, but it seemed as if half the population of Balsam was out and about. Each time we saw a headlight in the distance, we would scoot through the ditch into the brush. After it passed, we would get back on the road and continue our journey. Our mindset didn’t include stealth. We hadn’t had to sneak around to keep from being discovered before. How could so many people be on the roads at this time of night? After 200 yards and 10 cars we finally decided we should get into the woods and follow an old deer trail to the pool with the big fish. The realization that we didn’t have criminal minds was chipping away at confidence in the plan.
We couldn’t give away our position by traveling with lights on. Fumbling through the dark, the brush was slapping our faces, and I fell twice – once stumbling over a rock and once kicking into a deadfall. The second time I threw my spear forward and hit Kelly in the back of the legs. Fortunately, the denim of his jeans was enough to keep him from being my first victim of the night.
After what seemed to be an hour, we made it to the edge of the creek. There was a short but steep bank leading down to the water – and it was slippery! Kelly’s feet went out from under him, and quickly he found himself up to his waist in the cold creek. He dropped both his flashlight and spear, and it took getting soaked to his shoulders to find them.
Scrambling back up on dry land, we took a pause. Sure we had spooked the fish from the pool, we waited for half an hour for them to return. Our talk turned to mounting doubts about this evening’s entertainment. We knew our moms wouldn’t turn us in, but did anyone see us – with jacklights and spears in hand – as we tried to stay invisible along the roadside? What were the chances that a game warden might be watching this exact spot? How would we get a 20-pound northern home? We hadn’t brought a pack to carry fish in. Talk about the gang who couldn’t shoot straight!
After 30 minutes it was time to get to work. Dozens of big northerns and walleyes should be in the pool by now. We turned our lights on and were surprised that most of the light reflected off the surface of the water, making it almost opaque. What little probed into the depths showed no fish. We searched for five minutes and found none. I looked at Kelly and was shocked to see the reflected beam from his light bouncing straight up – illuminated by the fog – all the way to the low cloud layer giving anyone for miles around a spotlight and path right down to where we were conducting illegal business!
That was it. The last straw. We ditched the spears and lights a few yards into the woods, knowing we could pick them up sometime next week. We stumbled our way through the undergrowth, finally emerging back at the Scenic Highway wet, cold, no fish and defeated.
Mom was still playing solitaire when I got home. She could see that it hadn’t been an enjoyable night, smiled, said nothing and went back to her game. She never mentioned the episode again.
That was the only time I intentionally broke the law. I learned a lot about myself from that night. I discovered that I wasn’t smart enough to be a criminal and didn’t have the stomach for it anyway. It bothered me that if I did something wrong, being caught was worse than the excitement of illegally catching some fish – something I could do legally most other times of the year. I hated the idea of constantly looking over my shoulder to see who might be watching.
There are many things that are exciting and fulfilling that I enjoy every day. My family is number one. Getting into the backcountry, traveling, fishing, hunting, photographing nature, writing about it pretty much covers the rest. That’s good enough for me. I didn’t learn the hard way – I was too stupid to let that happen.
